An Archive of Curious Facts for the Curious
Image: DeviantArt by incolor16 The Swan Queen of the silent lake, Gliding majestic o’er the liquid court, Deep in the shadowy break, Where the imaginary water nymphs resort; Where fox-gloves hang their bells, And oaken-bowers their branches intertwine; And solitude in leafy covert dwells, That sanctuary, snowy queen, is thine. Few violate the state—the timid […]
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The following is an remarkable short “sonnet” titled “An Aeronaut to his Lady” composed by Frank Sidgwick (1879-1939) quoted in David McCord (Editor), What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse, 1945: I Through Blue Sky Fly To You. Why? Sweet Love, Feet Move So Slow! This sonnet differs from traditional […]
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Here is an offbeat poem which was written by Eileen Tupaz, a then student of Ateneo University (Philippines): i’m tired of being a zero vector i’m tired of being a zero vector with no direction no dimension and no magnitude; what i need is another element — but that would be a contradiction of my […]
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The following is a quaint mnemonic of a recipe for making ink which first appeared in John de Beauchesne’s Writing Book, 1602, and quoted in David Nunes Carvalho, Forty Centuries of Ink, 1904: To make common Ink, of Wine take a quart, Two ounces of Gumme, let that be a part; Five ounces of Galls, of […]
Read MoreThere had been many verses written over the years that talk about the intricacies of English pronunciation. The following verse from The Mixture of Low Spirits (1875) is just one of many:
Read MoreSir Robert Watson-Watt was a Scottish physicist and a proponent of radio direction finding and radar technology. His ideas were credited for the defeat of more than a quarter of German U-boats and subsequently enabled the Royal Air Force to win the Battle of Britain in 1941. Several years later, he was pulled over by […]
Read MoreDining with a Miser [Jonathan] Swift having dined with a rich miser, pronounced the following grace after dinner: “Thanks for this miracle, it is no less, Than finding manna in the wilderness, In midst of famine we have found relief, And seen the wonders of a chine of beef; Chimneys have smok’d that never smok’d […]
Read MoreBe good, be good, be always good, And now & then be clever, But don’t you ever be too good, Nor ever be too clever; For such as be too awful good They awful lonely are, And such as often clever be Get cut & stung & trodden on by persons of lesser mental capacity, […]
Read MoreHere is a curious little verse. If you read the entire verse normally, you’d find that the writer has some cynical views on marriage. However, if you read the poem in an alternating fashion (first line, third line, second line and fourth line) for each stanza, then the meaning of the verse becomes the opposite: […]
Read MoreIngenious Postmen The following ludicrous direction to a letter was copied verbatim from the original and interesting document: too dad Tomas hat the ole oke otchut I O Bary pade Sur plees to let ole feather have this sefe. The letter found the gentleman at ‘The Old Oak Orchard, Tenbury.’ In another letter, the writer, […]
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